


Silhouette

by Thalius



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Kenobi - John Jackson Miller
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Goodbyes, Introspection, Making Out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27008446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thalius/pseuds/Thalius
Summary: Sometimes staying in place feels like running away.
Relationships: Annileen Calwell/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 55





	Silhouette

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a gentler, more sappy remix on the final scene in the Kenobi book because I just finished it and I cannot handle how sad Obi-Wan is the entire goddamn time

The scrap around Ben’s home seemed something of a permanent fixture by now—enough that he invited her to sit on what she thought was the bulkhead of a sandcrawler that lay half-buried beside the eastern face of his house.

“You sit out here?” Annileen asked, leaning back against the rough stucco exterior wall behind them. It was early evening, but the suns were low enough in the sky that this side of the house was cast in double shadow. Even still, the heat rising off the sand was so hot the air wavered.

“Not really.” He sat down beside her with a small wince. He’d come away from the standoff in Haunter’s Gorge with little more than dust on his robes, but she supposed battling dragons took its toll regardless. “I’m not quite that green.”

She smiled. The flask in her jacket pocket was full—the last of the sweetest water to be found on Tatooine. Alderaan was supposed to have a lot of water, but she’d packed it anyway, some sentimental part of herself wanting to take a piece of Dannar with her, even something this fleeting.

Now, though, Annileen removed it from her coat and offered it to Ben. He raised a brow but took it without argument, nodding in gratitude. “Doesn’t all this junk bother you?” she asked, looking around his yard.

“Drives me insane,” he muttered, and tipped the flask up. He paused to wipe at his mouth. “But it’s a good cover.”

Crazy old Ben Kenobi, the man who talks to himself and lives in the middle of nowhere. He would do well to stay away from the Claim for a while, even if he’d been found innocent of Gault’s myriad charges against him. But he wouldn’t be able to stay away forever—even a Jedi needed to eat.

The thought of him going into her store and her not being there next time made her throat tighten. Tatooine was a lonely place even in crowds; she couldn’t fathom staying out here by herself, surrounded by garbage to scare other people away. 

Ben passed her the flask. She took it, and then set it in the sand in front of her, forgoing the offer to drink. “I can’t believe you’re staying.”

He exhaled. “It’s what I have to do.”

“As a Jedi.”

Ben flinched, and she looked at him. “Don’t worry,” Annileen said with a soft smile. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“I believe you,” he told her, the lines around his eyes crinkling, though he wasn’t smiling. “It would mean the death of your family, anyway.”

He always spoke so pleasantly, no matter what came out of his mouth. The sentiment should have made her shiver; instead, Annileen laughed. “Are you threatening me?”

“Oh, dear, no. As I said, I’m not that green.” He looked down at his clasped hands, hanging between his knees. “But it is a reality. Spreading rumours of surviving Jedi is a dangerous gamble.”

“Yeah, well.” Annileen sighed. “I know how to keep secrets. Better than you, apparently.”

Ben chuckled beside her. It was a real show of amusement, a rare enough thing in its own right. But in the shelter of his home, cast in long, domed, duplicate shadow by the evening suns, it felt like a confession.

Annileen took a risk by unfurling her hand and placing it on his forearm. He looked up, but he didn’t brush her away. He was warm beneath the thin shirt he wore, but cooler than she’d been expecting. “You said you went through a big change,” she murmured, and felt him stiffen. “One not of your own choosing. I think I know the edges of it. You don’t need to tell me the details. But it feels—wrong to leave you here.”  _ In the midst of my own life tumbling on its face,  _ she didn’t say. Annileen knew they weren’t comparable—knew that whatever had happened to him and those he loved had been so horrifying that he’d come  _ here _ to hide from it—but she thought that maybe she understood what that kind of loneliness felt like. It was a very different kind than the decades of monotony she’d put her family through.

“You’re not leaving me here,” he assured her. “I’m staying.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Perhaps,” he whispered, and a small thrill went through her. It was tamped down when he spoke again. “But it’s not my decision to make. Not anymore.”

She looked up at him. His eyes were too bright a blue, as if lit by some inner warmth. It should have been unsettling, but it was just… Ben.

Annileen frowned then, a thought occurring to her. “Is Ben even your real name?”

He smiled. “Of a sorts,” he replied. “It’s close enough to the truth.”

“Close works,” she murmured. 

They weren’t sitting that far apart. She could feel his body thrumming, a quiet current that seemed like it could just as easily be the course of a stream. Unobtrusive, comforting, and subdued. Annileen knew exactly one Jedi, but she knew people. She knew how bodies reacted when they were only a few centimetres apart. Ben couldn’t be that different, extraordinary pedigree or no.

Ben unfolded his hands and set one atop her own. “You asked me at the Gorge,” he murmured, “how lightsabers work.”

The look on her face must have been ridiculous. Conversations with Ben weren’t winding, they were downright  _ spiky. _ Random juts of loose threads and sidebars and stray thoughts, jumbled together into a mix that should have been infuriating, but was instead endearing. He wasn’t crazy, nor stupid, but she could spend the rest of her life talking to him and not be able to predict his next train of thought.

“Yes,” she whispered then, realising she hadn’t responded. Her brain was still struggling to pay attention when he was so close, and seemed to have only gotten closer.

“The blades draw one another together,” he explained quietly. His thumb was running across the top of her hand, and she decided she could probably sit here for the next decade if it meant he kept caressing her like that. “They invite conflict when met. It’s why I shouldn’t have—it’s why I can’t open with it. Not unless I intend to close.”

She was watching his face now, and he hers. Annileen wondered if he could see her cheeks pulsing with the thud of her heart, they were so flushed. “It’s a good thing dragons don’t carry swords,” she whispered. Then she leaned in and kissed him.

He wasn’t surprised by the advance. He didn’t retreat from it, either; instead that wonderful, lovely, cool palm of his lifted from her hand and touched her cheek. She was sure he could feel it now, the wild beat of her heart in her face. Annileen closed her eyes and kissed him again.

Their knees brushed when he shifted towards her. He tasted like the toothpaste purchased from the Claim, like everybody else did, because it was the only goddamn toothpaste around for miles and miles. But Ben made it his own, a bit sweeter, a bit breathier. The scruff on his face was pleasantly abrasive against her mouth and chin. Her hand went to his arm, and another thrill went through her at the wiry muscle she found there. 

A few slow kisses turned into a few more, until she was certain he had no intentions of pulling away. The rhythm was soft and slow, and Annileen realised that she was, for the first time in over a decade, making out with a man behind the cover of a building. She just needed a stolen cigarette and she’d be a teenager again.

Ben didn’t make any advances beyond kissing, something she was simultaneously grateful for and disappointed about. It felt good to kiss somebody, to  _ want _ to kiss someone and be kissed back. The pleasant hum in the back of his throat told her he felt much the same. 

Besides, kissing Ben was a pretty good bargain. His hand cradled her elbow, the other slipping from her face to cup at her neck. He touched her gently, reverently, and maybe Annileen was just dizzy from the heat, but his hands felt  _ good, _ better than she remembered anyone else’s feeling. And he was just touching her elbow. She shuddered and deepened their kiss, and his hands tightened where they rested on her body.

Annileen could have done this forever, and probably would have, but her traitorous lungs were burning. She broke away with a gasp and leaned into him, knocking their foreheads together. They breathed the same air, harsh and loud in the clear evening. This close, she could smell him now—the tang of sweat and mild softness of linen. 

“You’re sure you don’t want to tag along?” she breathed. “We could be doing this... the entire trip to Alderaan.” Just the thought of it made her giddy. Her whole body ached—not just for him, but at being held again, being this close to another person. 

He shook with quiet laughter, a bit breathless. “I wish I could,” he murmured, and each word was heavy enough that she understood the gravity of what he was trying to say, yet couldn’t. “But I have to stay.”

Annileen nodded against him, unsurprised. It still made her eyes sting. “Okay.”

“I think you’ll find a lot of people lining up to kiss you, Annileen,” he told her. “You’re quite beautiful.”

She shivered, but smiled through the pleasure of the compliment. “Can you read my thoughts or something?” Then she pulled back. “Wait— _ can  _ you?”

He smiled at her. It was almost devilish. “Not as such. But you’re projecting your intent quite loudly.”

“Not loudly enough, if you’re staying put.” Annileen sighed. His other hand still cupped her elbow, as if unable to move. She didn’t let go of his arm, either. She wondered how long it had been since someone had touched him like this, too. He seemed just as reluctant to retreat from it. “I think I have to leave now.”

“That’s alright,” he said quietly, but the melancholy in his voice made the sentiment fall flat. Then Ben stood up and, still clinging together, she rose with him. He had no height on her, but she still had to tip her face up to look at him when they were this close. He was tense again, as if straining under some great weight.

“That was lovely,” he said then, his expression playful. It made her wonder how old he actually was—he’d never told her. He looked young now, too young for the sadness that seemed to cling to him like dust. “You’re a good kisser.”

She grinned. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Planet-hopping has its upsides,” he said coyly. Then he sobered, his eyes sliding off her and back to the path away from his house. It led down the hill, where the landspeeder was parked. “I….”

She watched his face. He struggled for words, and met her eyes after a moment of searching. “I came to this place broken,” he whispered. “I can’t fix a lot of it, but—your kindness meant a great deal to me. It still does. Thank you for that. It’s no small thing.”

The smile that lifted her mouth was wobbly. “Well, you don’t need to hear my own laundry list of gratitudes—you’ve heard them enough already, I’m sure. But….” Her throat closed again. These would be some of their final words. She had no illusions of them ever seeing each other again. Lightning did not strike the same place twice. “Thank you, Ben, for coming here and starting trouble. It’s what all of us needed, I think.”

He smiled at her, and some of the sadness left his eyes. “Happy to oblige.”

She kissed him again, one final time, and lingered only for a few more moments, because she would stay forever otherwise. When his hand fell away from her elbow, she knew it was time to go.

Annileen turned away from him, leaving the flask in the sand. A parting gift. She didn’t need to bring water with her—there would be plenty on Alderaan.

“Annileen,” he called as she began to walk down the path. She turned and looked back at him.

He seemed to be preparing himself for something. Straight-backed and shoulders wide-set, he deliberated, hesitated, and then said finally, with a small tick of his mouth as if delivering a joke: “May the Force be with you.”


End file.
